


Miracles for Sale & Trade

by lemonsharks



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Dark Future (but not like you're thinking), F/F, Implied Relationships, everything is bad, hawke ex machina, rare words meme, stealth shipping
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-23
Updated: 2015-08-23
Packaged: 2018-04-16 20:44:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 594
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4639566
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lemonsharks/pseuds/lemonsharks
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When the Herald does not return from Redcliffe Castle, the Inquisition falters but doesn't fall. (In which Varric is late getting back with reinforcements.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Miracles for Sale & Trade

**Author's Note:**

> For the rare words meme: Concilliabule - A secret meeting of people who are hatching a plot.

The world falls red, and the Inquisition falls back on the word of a ghost of a boy.

No one has has captured Redcliffe by force in centuries; they run to gather strength that will never be enough.

Celene will not listen.

Gaspard lays blame, for the assault that follows, upon them.

There is red dust caught and glinting in the cloth over Cassandra’s mouth, the ground of Orlais diseased.

They have the corpses of buildings with demons stalking outside, too few guards and too few scouts. She has not laid eyes upon the living in the months since they scattered out of Haven, and her stomach still clenches when she thinks of the Inquisitor.

Perhaps you only get to look at death and deny it once.

A horn sounds in the distance, two short sharp notes and two long, mournful ones. The Emperor of Orlais has recaptured old ground from the dead. They will need to move out soon—they’re too close. A whistle from the eves—Sera’s watch, Sera’s signal—announces the two more they’ve been waiting on.

Their number has shrunk in the last half a year, down to their last fifty heads including scouts and soldiers. There are no rituals of mourning, anymore. She has not thought of the other Seekers in three months.

Near the fire, hidden from the outside by a crumbling wall and a pile of debris, Josephine cuts a new tip on her quill with a blood-stained dagger. Deliberate, shuffling footsteps some yards out; leathers are quieter than plate or mail, and the echo of a staff on stone. Cassandra asks Sera who is coming their way, and receives a rude noise and, _do I look like I have a spyglass?_ in response.

She sighs and stands, takes up her sword—nicked in the center of the blade, with no blacksmith to repair it—and makes a circuit around their camp. Quietly. A rage demon glows half a mile to the north, slinking toward the lake. There was a time she would have run it down and run it through. They don’t have the strength or the time for it now. Laughter from the camp; Cassandra hears it because she’s _listening_ for it.

Cullen had said some time ago that now they got to choose how they would die; she had not believed him then. Leliana had not believed him, either. She had gone in the night with a bow and three agents.

Cassandra bites her lip and breathes out her nose.

Another whistle from the roof: two, friendly, not being followed.

She finishes her round and sheathes her sword, sets her shield by the wall and touches the crown of Josephine’s skull when she passes by. The shadows approaching change slowly into people: a slip of a woman with a staff in her hand, limping and smaller than Cassandra ever would have thought after hearing the tales and reading the book. A dwarf, beside her and a step behind.

“Look who I ran into on the way to the market,” Varric says, once they’ve come within range of the firelight.

“You son of a bitch,” she replies. The weight inside her chest splinters—one more of them _alive_ , alive and undamaged.

Half a year ago she would have wanted nothing more than to strangle him with her bare hands. Tonight, Varric has brought them a miracle; she takes him in her arms without asking, and is only half-surprised that he returns the embrace.

They’ll have to run tomorrow, and tomorrow they might have a chance.

**Author's Note:**

> Assumed: Alexius creates at least three (four?) universes when he removes the Herald from the time stream:  
> 1) the dark future we see in-game  
> 2) the erased dark future we see in-game  
> 3) a dark future where removing the Herald from the timestream acts like killing them instead of making them never exist (that's this one)  
> 4) a world where the Herald didn't exist but one of the other three possible Heralds filled in  
> 5) ???  
> 6) Profit!


End file.
